An architecture firm involved in the design of the planned Umlalazi-Nkandla Smart Growth Centre, also known as Zumaville, in Nkandla, has approached the courts in a bid to get back money owed to it, the Sunday Times reported.

A director at Johannesburg architecture firm Mashabane Rose Associates, Phil Mashabane, filed papers in the high court in Pretoria in a bid to get payment for two invoices totalling about R800 000.

Mashabane Rose Associates completed a feasibility study and mock-ups of the planned R2-billion village for Kombani Consulting. Kombani was contracted by the rural development and land reform department to do the work.

In court papers, Mashabane claims Kombani contracted his company in January 2011 in a “partly oral, partly written” as project manager and architect for the village, and then did not pay R741 802 and R55 060.

The department and Kombani director Tinyiko Maswanganyi have each accused the other of approving the appointment of Mashabane Rose Associates.

‘First town of its kind’At a meeting earlier this month, President Jacob Zuma, who has a homestead in the KwaZulu-Natal area, said that the Umlalazi-Nkandla Smart Growth Centre would be “the first town of its kind to be built by black people after democracy”.

Nkandla municipal manager Sthembiso Mthembu said at the time he did not know about the project besides what he had gleaned through the media.

“I don’t understand why, if a town is going to be built in our area, we’re not part of it as the Nkandla municipality,” the Sunday Times quoted him saying.
– Sapa